Explorer has taken a positive step that might cause police and prosecutorial agencies to rethink their position, and aggressively arrest, prosecute and sentence insurance fraud perpetrators. Explorer Insurance announced late in August 2010 that it will no longer write private automobile policies in Florida because there is too much fraud. According to press reports: "The company is taking this action in light of poor ongoing business results in Florida, particularly in the area of private passenger automobile no-fault coverage, in which loss fraud has been rampant with no signs of abatement," Explorer vice president, Steve Frisina, said in the letter to Florida's Office of Insurance Regulation.

The letter said Explorer intends to send termination notices to agents who sell its coverage within a week of the Office's acceptance of its plan. Policy holders will begin receiving non-renewal notices also within one week. And, by January 2012, no Explorer policies will remain in effect.

The Office has deferred accepting Explorer's plan for the time being until the company can fix some of the details of its exit. In the meantime, however, Explorer has severely restricted the number of policies its agents are allowed to write and has told agents it is no longer paying commissions.

In May, the National Insurance Crime Bureau released a report that said that Florida has led the nation in suspected staged auto accidents the last three years in a row. According to the report, Florida had 3,006 suspicious claims from 2007 to 2009, and that was almost twice as many as the two states with the next most suspicious claims, New York and California. 

According to NICB, Tampa had the most fraudulent claims. Local insurance agents are frustrated by the situation, and by the lack of government action to crack down, they are collecting petition signatures from new policy and renewal clients and forwarding that petition on to the Department of Financial Services, which houses the Division of Insurance Fraud.